Manage all leave applications in a central menu
Streamline your workforce management with our Time Off page that makes managing employee leave requests a walk in the park. With just a few clicks, you can approve, decline or edit leave requests, and employees will receive live notifications. Once leave is approved, it will flow through to payroll for processing on the relevant pay period. Approved leave can also be displayed on the roster to assist your managers with rostering.
The Time Off page is the central source of truth for all leave regardless of where the leave has been input including:
- Leave applications from an employee via the Employee App
- Leave added in Approve Shifts
- Leave added manually on a payslip
- Leave submitted via an admin for an employee
If you'd like to learn more about using the Time Off function, sign up to view our Managing Leave and Building Rosters On-Demand webinar. Use the chapter function on the right-hand side to skip ahead to the relevant sections you'd like to learn about!
See our guide below for how to:
- Understand the functionality of the Time Off page including a virtual tour
- Approve, Decline, or Edit an employee leave request
- Resolve shift and leave conflicts from the Time Off page
- Submit leave for an employee
- Manage employees calling in or going home sick
- Various methods to view or export the leave balances of your employees, individually or in bulk
- Select recipients of leave notifications
- Export employee leave applications
- Understand the available Leave reports within foundU
- And Leave FAQs
Want to understand more about the process of Leave applications, the settings and options that affect leave applications and how leave is paid in foundU? Check out our helpful Understanding Leave guide.
Managing employee leave
With the table view or calendar-style interface of the Time Off > Leave page, you'll be able to easily view your employee's upcoming leave applications and manage them quickly throughout your work day.
- View, approve, edit, or decline pending leave applications
- View and manage employee leave in a weekly or monthly calendar view
- See upcoming public holidays in line with leave applications
- View processed leave applications including paycycle information
- Filter and Export leave applications to CSV
Want to view all of this and more in a virtual walk-through of the Time Off page? Check it out below! Use the expand option on the top right side to view in full screen! You can click through at your own pace and navigate backwards if needed - press 'Esc' to close the expanded window.
To optimise your experience on the Leave page, learn about its key features below.
Calendar vs Table view
You can view your leave applications in Table view or Calendar view (by month or week), each offering unique benefits.
- Table view
- This view defaults to Upcoming, pending applications.
- Easily switch between Upcoming, In progress or completed applications.
- Ability to Bulk approve, decline or Export using the tick boxes on the left and bulk actions bar.
- Calendar view
- See all employee leave for the entire week or month on one screen.
- View the placement of public holidays against leave applications.
- Edit, approve or decline applications from Calendar view.
- Enjoy a prefiltered date range when using the Calendar view and filters in combination.
- Bulk actions and Export options are not available in the calendar view.
The below gif illustrates how to navigate from a table view to a monthly calendar view, highlighting public holidays and edit options.
Quick filters & Pending/ Approved/ Declined badges
There are a variety of useful filters and badges available on the Time Off page to assist you in locating an application or refining your view, including:
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- Quick filters of Upcoming, In progress, or Completed, are available in Table view.
- Quick filters of Week and Month in the Calendar view allow you to see what leave is upcoming within that period.
- Leave applications are divided into Pending, Approved, or Declined states. Use the coloured badges on the right-hand side to refine your search.
- The search bar to the left of the quick filters to quickly find a specific employee. Search by name or their employee ID.
Estimated leave balances
The amount of leave approved as well as the estimated balance at the start of the leave application can be seen in the field Amount/Est.Balance. The colour of the text indicates different conditions of the leave balance.
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- Green - The employee has enough leave to cover the requested leave in the application.
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Red - The employee does not have enough leave to cover the requested leave in the application. Entitlements with negative accrual will also be displayed in red if the value is negative
- For example, in the below example, Carlena has requested 53.20 hours of leave but as of the date of the request will only have 32.3 hours accrued. LWOP will be used to fill the remaining amount if approved.
Paycyle information
Hovering over the icon to the right of the application will provide you with the relevant pay cycle information. The payment status of the approved leave application will be indicated by the color of the icon.
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Grey - Awaiting payment.
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Green - Completed payment.
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Orange - Partial payment. This will occur if an approved leave application spans more than one pay cycle.
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Grey - Awaiting payment.
Hot tip: Click on a payslip ID in the paycycle breakdown and it will take you to the editable payslip for that employee, provided you have the appropriate admin permissions.
View your leave applications in your calendar
It can be helpful to have pending and approved leave applications visible on external calendars, allowing for easy visibility in the business. The external calendar function will work with common calendar types like Gmail, Apple and Outlook.
The platform's approvals and pending applications are instantly updated in the external calendar integration. This is one of our most popular leave features for our customers. If you haven't set it up yet, it's worth considering!
For information on how to set up your calendar, please refer to the guide.
Once employees apply for leave via the Employee App, their relevant manager will receive an email notification that there is a pending leave request, and the application is instantly visible in your admin portal.
Admins should manage employee leave applications in Time & Attendance > Time Off in advance of the employee's application. In this section below we will discuss in order how to:
- View, approve, or edit pending leave applications
- Managing leave applications in bulk
- or Decline a leave application and send a decline reason to the employee
Hot tip: Approvals, edits and declining applications can all be performed using table view or calendar view depending on your preference. Bulk options cannot be performed from the calendar view of the Time Off page.
Approving leave applications
- Navigate to Time & Attendance > Time Off.
- To locate the required leave applications. When opening this page, it will default to 'Upcoming' and 'Pending' applications.
- Use the search bar to the left of the quick filters to find a specific employee. Search for their name or their employee ID.
- Filter leave applications by Upcoming, In progress, or Completed.
- Each application state can be selected via the coloured badges on the right. They are broken down into Pending, Approved, or Declined states.
- Leave applications in a Pending state will require action. You have the following options:
- Approve - Select the green tick to Approve the Application.
- Decline - Select the red cross to Decline the Application.
- Edit- Select the start or end time and then Edit Application.
- Once approved, the application will be visible on the roster and will automatically flow through to payroll. It can then be located by filtering by the approved badge.
The below gif follows an example of a straightforward approval of an employee's personal leave application. We then navigate to Approved applications to see that it has been successfully managed.
Editing leave applications
On some occasions, you or an employee may need to make changes to a pending or approved leave application. The following conditions must be met to make an edit successfully.
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Admins can make edits to Approved or Pending applications provided a portion of the application has not yet been paid.
- ie. If an employee has leave for a 2-week period, an admin can make edits up until the point that the first week of the leave application is paid.
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Employees can make edits to Approved or Pending applications provided the start date of the application has not yet commenced.
- When an employee makes an edit to an Approved application, the application reverts to a pending state for admin reapproval.
- ie. An employee can edit a March 26-31 application until March 25th.
To edit a leave application:
- Locate the required leave application, click on the start or end date from Table view or the edit pencil in Calendar view.
- The leave application details will appear, you can hover over the leave amount to see where leave hours per day have come from. This menu will simply let you know where the leave has come from, there is nothing to action here. Select Edit Application to progress.
To understand more about where leave hours come from on an application, refer to our Understanding Leave guide.
- Follow the steps to make the relevant changes to the application, the below information can be edited:
- The start or end date of the application
- The leave type used
- The daily hours of leave per day
- Attaching a supporting document such as a medical certificate (this can also be done in the Employee profile or via Approve shifts)
- Once your changes have been made, select Confirm and approve leave to save your changes.
The leave application will be successfully updated and flow through to the Approved section of Time Off. The employee will receive a notification that their leave application has been adjusted.
Managing leave applications in bulk
If you have reviewed multiple applications and would like to make approvals in bulk to save time, this can be done from the table view version of Time Off.
To approve or decline applications in bulk:
- Select the relevant leave applications by marking the checkboxes on the left.
- From the action bar at the bottom of your screen, choose Accept or Decline.
Hot tip: When only a single application is selected, you can also choose to edit it from the action bar.
The below gif follows an example of a bulk approving leave applications from the table view of Time Off. You'll note that we did not include the leave application where the employee has insufficient hours, as we may want to look over that application in more detail first.
Declining a leave application
If you decline an employee's leave application, you can optionally add in a reason which will be sent to the employee.
- Note that if you are declining leave applications in bulk, the one reason for declining will be sent to all employees.
The below gif follows an example of a leave application being declined by an admin. We also detail how the employee can view the reason that the admin has sent.
After approving or declining leave applications
- The employee will receive an email notification of the leave application status (declined or approved).
- Approved leave will be visible on your rosters. Ensure to turn on the 'Leave and unavailability' toggle on your roster display settings.
- Approved leave will flow through to payroll.
As the Time Off page is a central source of truth for all employee Leave in your platform, when approving leave, if there is a published shift for the same day, you can resolve the conflicting rostered shifts from the leave menu.
To resolve shift conflicts within the leave menu:
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If an employee submits a leave application that conflicts with a published shift, at the time of approval, you can resolve the conflicting rostered shift.
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The resolve rostered shift modal will appear once you The available options are:
- Cancel shift - The shift will be cancelled - only the leave application will remain.
- Keep rostered shift - The shift will remain - if approved, the rostered shift & the leave application will be paid.
- Remove employee - The shift will remain but the employee will be removed from it. This option should be chosen when you'd like to fill the shift as the shift will remain on the roster in an unassigned state and can be reassigned to another employee.
Hot tip: These shift resolutions can be actioned individually or in bulk!
SCENARIO
In the below example, an employee Daniel needs to take some annual leave on short notice and hence has already been rostered for 3 shifts. The manager approving decided that they no longer need the shift on Wednesday so would like to cancel it, and would like to reassign Thursday and Friday's shifts to another employee.
Please note: You'll need to refresh your roster to see the changes take effect.
The below gif shows the above example resolving shift conflicts with both the 'cancel shift' and 'remove employee' resolutions and how these resolutions will flow through and affect the rostered shifts.
There may be times when you need to submit a leave application for an employee. Common reasons for this would be:
- The employee has called in an emergency and you need to input sick leave for them.
- Manually entering existing leave for employees when you move over to foundU.
- Employees experiencing difficulties inputting leave for themselves.
To submit leave for an employee:
- Navigate to Time & Attendance > Time Off.
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Select + Leave.
- Complete the leave application with the employee's details and select Confirm and approve leave.
- The application will be automatically approved and can be viewed by filtering on the Approved badge and searching for the employee.
We demo the 'submit on behalf' feature in the editing daily hours section below.
Editing the daily leave hours
Both admins and employees can edit the daily hours of leave in a leave application. This can be done during the leave application, or afterwards via editing the leave application.
Watch our example below as an admin submits leave on behalf of the employee. You will observe:
- Editing the hours of leave to 4 hours on one day.
- The application automatically comes through to 'Approved' as it was submitted by an admin.
Please note: If you would like employees to be able to edit the number of hours in the leave application, 2 Leave settings would want to look at making changes to. You can read more about how these behave here.
When employees unexpectedly call in sick on the day or leave work due to illness, it can disrupt operations. How the situation is managed will depend on:
- Whether or not the employee has submitted a leave application via their App.
- Whether or not they worked any time before going home sick.
- Whether or not the employee is salaried (leave cannot be applied in Approve Shifts for these employees).
There are three methods for dealing with this scenario:
- Add in the personal leave via Approve Shifts while adjusting the hours that were worked.
- Request that the employee submit a leave application via their App for their sick leave.
- The admin can submit a leave on behalf of an employee via Time off.
Once your method is chosen, all Time Off will flow back into the Time Off menu as your central source of truth. Only one of the above methods should be used for an individual sick day.
To apply leave directly to a shift in Approve Shifts, please refer to our guide on Applying Leave in Approve Shifts. This guide covers applying for a full day and a partial day of leave.
Employees and admins may need to check the current or future forecasted leave balances for different reasons. Below we will discuss the best ways to:
- Employees to view their leave balances in the Employee App
- Admins to view the leave balance of an employee
- Admins to export the leave balances of multiple employees
Employees viewing and forecasting leave balances
Employees can access this information via Time Off > Leave on their Employee App. This will show all types of balances available in the employee's profile, with the applicable balance under the Leave type.
If your business has selected to not show the balance for a certain leave type to employees, this will display as 'Balance not visible' (see image below). Employees can still apply for these leave types but must consult an admin to check their balance.
Employees forecasting a future leave balance
It will be helpful for an employee to see their estimated leave balance for a future date if they are planning for a holiday and need to know their leave balance.
To see an estimated future leave balance:
- In their Employee App, the employee can select their future leave dates.
- The leave balance will display an estimated balance at the time of the leave application. This is based on the employee's current work pattern (as set in their profile).
Please note: The future estimated balance would change if the employee's work pattern is altered in their profile or the employee takes any leave or cancels any leave between now and that day.
SCENARIO
In the example below Aimee has an annual balance of 53.56 (as of Nov 4, 2022). Aimee is applying for leave starting March 30th for 2 days, as of this date she will have an estimated balance of 48.70. This is based on her current pattern of work and her upcoming approved annual leave (10-11 Nov 2022 & 21 Dec -03 Jan).
Please note: If Aimee's work pattern changes or if she takes more leave between now and the future date, the forecasted balance will be reduced.
Viewing employee leave balances as an admin
You can view Employee Leave balances from a variety of places as an admin. Where you view the particular balance will depend on what your particular permissions are and what part of the platform you are working in. You can view Employee balances from:
- The Employee Profile. Employee Card > Employment Type > Entitlements.
- The Approve Shifts page. Edit shift > add leave type > add leave amount.
- Time Off page. Via + Leave (submit leave on behalf of the employee). This instruction is provided above.
The most accurate up-to-date leave balance will always be in the Employee's profile > Employment Type > Entitlements.
Tip: An employee's leave balance is updated each time a draft payslip (that contains either a leave redemption or leave accrual) is generated.
Leave balances in the employee profile
Admins with permissions to access Employee profiles can view and edit balances (if needed) from the Employee Profile.
To view leave balances in the Employee Profile:
- Navigate to People > Approved People and find the employee. Select their name to go to their profile.
- Select the Employee Card tab and open the Employment Type section.
- Scroll down to the entitlements section. Here you can view, add, or edit leave entitlements and balances.
Leave balances in Approve shifts
This method will be particularly useful for admins who don't have access to Employee profiles such as roster managers. Admins with permission to Approve Shifts can view leave balances here.
For example, when a permanent employee calls in sick and you add personal leave to their shift, the available balance can be seen below the input field.
Export leave balances
If you'd like to view or export multiple employees' leave balances at one time, you can do this from the Bulk actions of Approved people. This export will pull current data from Employee profiles.
To export leave balances:
- Navigate to People > Approved People.
- Identify the employees you'd like to export the leave balances.
- Use filters to search for employees matching specific criteria
- Select individual employees by marking the checkbox next to them
- or use a combination of both
- From Bulk Actions select either Export all filtered or Export selected (whichever is most appropriate).
- Select/deselect the fields you're interested in. Towards the bottom of the fields, there is a group titled Leave Detail. This section contains all the leave types available on your platform.
- Export to CSV.
Tip: Leave can also be exported from the CSV Import menu. This export will provide all entitlements for all non-casual employees. Use this export if you want to update entitlements.
Leave Notifications
Numerous communications can be sent through the leave application process to both employees and admin. These communications can be sent via email and/or SMS. They can be enabled, disabled, or edited to suit your needs. You can also add more admin users as recipients of any communications that are marked as dynamic.
Below you will find the actions that trigger the communication as well as the communication content ID and an overview of the default purpose of the communication.
The communications can be edited by navigating to Communication > Communication Content. You can read more about customising communications here.
- Employee submits a leave application
| ID | Recipient | Default content |
| 42 | Employee | The leave application has been successfully submitted. |
| 69 | Dynamic | An employee has requested leave. Includes the dates and the total hours. |
- Employee submits a leave application for a previous pay period
| ID | Recipient | Default content |
| 42 | Employee | The leave application has been successfully submitted. |
| 121 | Dynamic | An employee has requested leave for a previous pay period. Includes the dates and the reason for the leave application. |
- Employee edits a submitted leave application
| ID | Recipient | Default content |
| 109 | Employee | The updated leave application has been successfully submitted. |
| 111 | Dynamic | An employee has edited their previously submitted leave application. Includes the dates and the total hours of the amended application. |
- Employee cancels a submitted leave application
| ID | Recipient | Default content |
| 108 | Employee | The leave application has been cancelled successfully. |
| 110 | Dynamic | An employee has cancelled their submitted leave application. Includes the dates. |
- Admin approves a submitted leave application
| ID | Recipient | Default content |
| 95 | Employee | The leave application has been approved. |
| 96 | Dynamic | An employee's leave application has been approved. Includes the dates and the total hours. |
- Admin declines a submitted leave application
| ID | Recipient | Default content |
| 41 | Employee | The leave application has been declined. Includes the reason for the decline. |
| 97 | Dynamic | An employee's leave application has been declined. Includes the total hours, dates, and the reason for the decline. |
Allow Leave communications to go to multiple admins
Depending on the circumstances and duration, the approach to managing this will vary. You may want to do this in the below scenarios:
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Scenario: A manager is on extended leave and we need leave comms to go to another manager so they can manage leave applications.
- Solution: This can be managed by changing the manager (in bulk) on the employee profiles for the selected list of employees. You'll also need to ensure the manager has the relevant permissions to 'manage leave applications'.
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Scenario: We would always like certain leave comms to go to multiple admins in our business so there is more clarity.
- Solution: This can be managed by setting up the relevant comms in your business to be configured as dynamic. This way each comm can go to multiple different admins. If the additional person is not an admin, they can be set up as a contact for communication purposes.
Leave Reporting and FAQs
Exporting leave applications can serve various purposes such as record-keeping, auditing, and analysis. On the Time Off page, you can use the filters to locate past and future leave requests. From there, you can export them from the Table view.
Common use cases include:
- Export pending leave applications to provide to higher-level managers for written approval.
- Export a list of employees currently on leave to provide to rostering managers.
- Export a list of personal leave used by a particular employee.
This report can be accessed by admin users with 'Manage Leave Applications' permission. They can only access the leave applications of employees under their search restrictions. More leave reports are available to managers with access to Financial Reports
To export your leave applications
- Navigate to the Table view button on your Time Off page.
- Use the quick filters (located toward the top) with the Filters to locate the leave applications you're looking for.
- Select the leave applications you'd like to export by selecting the tickboxes either
- Individually or in bulk
- or, Select the top tickbox to 'select all on page ' or 'select everything'.
- From the action bar at the bottom of the page, select Export.
In addition to the Leave export from the Time Off page, admin users with the permission 'View Financial Report Centre' can access more Leave reports that contain financial data. These reports will provide more detailed data that can be used to:
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- Perform financial reporting & management
- Provide insight into budgeting and forecasting
- Do strategic planning
With these reports, you can accurately report on:
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- Processed leave balances at a particular date.
- Predicted leave balances (based on work pattern & approved leave applications).
- Leave movement over a period of time.
- Breaking down leave accrued, redeemed, or edited on a per-payslip basis.
The new Leave Reports
Leave liability and leave movement can be reported on through the new Leave Reports.
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- The leave liability report can be used to determine the amount of leave owed to employees on a specific date. It can accurately show past and present leave owed, as well as predict future leave owed.
- The leave movement report can be used to highlight any movement or changes to entitlement balances.
Please note: The new Leave Reports can pull data from 1 January 2024. If you require data from before this time, please use the previous existing leave reports.
Other Leave Reports
If you need to see data before January 1, 2024, or your platform does not yet have access to the new Leave Reports (beta), you'll find the existing Leave Reports helpful.
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- Report for Leave Movement before Jan 1 2024
- Leave Liability & Leave Paid before Jan 1 2024
How do I decline an approved leave application?
If you find you need to decline a leave application after it has been approved, you can do so by selecting the tick box on the left, then decline from the Bulk actions bar at the bottom of the screen.
This will move the application to declined.
My employee cannot submit their leave as they are too sick or in hospital, can I do it for them?
Yes, you sure can! In all the instances mentioned below, you would typically use the Time Off > + Leave button to request leave on behalf of an employee. Typical uses cases are:
- An employee has forgotten to submit their own application and the leave has passed.
- Your business has moved over to foundU and admins need to get the existing leave applications into foundU.
- An employee is to unwell or unavailable to submit their own leave.
- Cancelling an employee's leave (due to a submission error) and then resubmitting on their behalf.
When is my employee's leave balance (accrual or redemption) updated on their profile and in their Employee App? Does this occur at the time the leave is approved, or when the pay period ends?
Actually not its not either of the above.
An employee's balance (either from the result of an accrual or redemption) will be updated at the time the draft payslip that contains the leave is generated.
Can my employees see their personal (sick) leave balances? If not, how will they know their balances?
Each business chooses whether or not they would like their employees to see their personal leave balances. This is configured for the specific leave entitlement via Payroll settings > Leave rules.
If you have chosen to hide balances from your employees, employees can still apply for it without knowing their exact balance. Should their balance be insufficient in an application, the system will provide an orange notification letting them know that some hours may be unpaid as they might not have enough hours for the request.
Employees with hidden balances can reach out to their managers to check their personal leave balance.
If an employee edits a leave application after I have approved it, how will I know it has been edited?
An employee can edit any leave application until the leave application has been paid or partially paid. However please note:
- Any changes made to an application whether it is approved or still pending, will push the application back into pending for manager reapproval.
- A communication will be sent to inform you that the employee has edited their previously submitted leave application. This includes the dates and the total hours of the amended application.
I have paid an employee for annual leave, but it turns out they were sick and want it changed to sick leave. How can I do this if they have already been paid?
In the case that the employee has been paid for the incorrect leave type, you'll need to correct this by adjusting the employee's leave entitlements. This can be actioned on the specific payslip by using the 'Adjust Entitlements' option.
Please see the full instructions for this process here.
Depending on the initial leave type, this may or may not have accounted for leave loading, and require adjustments made there as well.